Windows 9?

[psychotron]

Pretty much just an opinion question. Since the wider adoption of Windows in the tablet space is a new thing that came with the advent of Windows 8 and we have no substantial track record concerning OS updates with these type of devices through Dell yet, what do you think the chances are that they'll extend driver support, etc. when Windows 9 rolls around next year or will we pretty much be on our own concerning software upgrades? Was thinking about this last night and I fear it will be the latter since the DV8P is a lower priced commodity. I sincerely hope I'm wrong because I really like this tablet and think we should be able to get as much useful life out of them as we do our laptop and desktop computers now that they run the same OS.

 

[James8561]

AFAIK OEMs never release any drivers for an OS that the machine did not come with. Dell hasn't done it in the past, they wouldn't start now.

 

[travis_valkyrie]

AFAIK OEMs never release any drivers for an OS that the machine did not come with. Dell hasn't done it in the past, they wouldn't start now.

That's partially incorrect. OEMs may extend product support, they even encourage users to upgrade to the newer OS and also provide compatible software drivers for the newer OS. If you mean by OEMs not releasing software drivers for earlier OS versions then yeah.

 

[xandros9]

AFAIK OEMs never release any drivers for an OS that the machine did not come with. Dell hasn't done it in the past, they wouldn't start now.

That depends in my experience.
I had an HP dv2000 pass through my hands before, and HP didn't have any 8 driver support IIRC.
My current ThinkPad T400? No complete support, some bits and pieces did work. But it shipped with Vista, had XP and 7 driver support.

Its interesting to see what happens, you raise a valid point.